Four Commentaries by Alassane D. Ouattara INTEGRATION AND GROWTH IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD ECONOMY International Monetary Fund Washington D.C., September 1999 ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution Cover design: Luisa Menjivar-Macdonald Composition: Julio R. Prego ISBN 1-55775-847-6 To order additional copies of this publication, contact: International Monetary Fund, Publication Services 700 19th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20431, U.S.A. Tel: (202) 623-7430 Telefax: (202) 623-7201 E-mail:
[email protected] Internet: http://www.imf.org ii ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution Contents Foreword v Better Integration into an Increasingly Globalized Economy 1 Africa: An Agenda for the Twenty-First Century 9 Political Dimensions of Economic Reforms 25 Regional Integration in Africa: An Important Step Toward Global Integration 37 iii ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution This page intentionally left blank ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution Foreword For countries the world over, development is taking place in a new context. Globalized and integrated financial markets are now the norm, complete with their tremendous opportunities—the chance to quicken the pace of investment, job creation, and growth—and, of course, some inevitable risks. As the 1997-98 financial crisis in Asia brought home, countries can no longer oper- ate in isolation; those with good economic policies stand to be rewarded by the markets, but those with poor policies must bear the consequences. How should countries navigate these new uncharted waters? That is the question that lies at the heart of the new policy debate—a debate that is punctuated with terms such as transparency, account- ability, good governance, consensus, participation, and above all, solidarity.